Uzbekistan became an independent state in 1991 following the demise of the Soviet Union. Coming on the heels of a global discourse on good governance and decentralization, Uzbekistan embarked on the highly complex task of reforming its public administration system. The implementation of these reforms, however, proved to be a daunting task, since the country had to deal with its Soviet legacy and its internal power structures and contradictions: weak state institutions, poorly developed national identities, and entrenched subnational political networks (cf., Ilkhamov 2004; Markowitz 2008; Melvin 2004).
Local government is one of the most problematic areas in Uzbekistan where the failure of the reform initiatives is quite evident. This chapter delineates the processes involved and explores the context, problems, quality, and...
